KTM has put the Venom naked superbike project on hold to focus solely on bringing the RC8 to market successfully. In 2004, the Venom concept was shown as a variant to the RC8 Superbike that would debut one year after the RC8 (which would have been this year). Clearly that is not the case, and KTM’s Thomas Kuttruf explained to MCN the reason for the delay:

“The bike is standing in Kiska’s (Gerald Kiska, the man behind the design company responsible for the look of all KTMs) office, but is currently a no-go for production. With the Venom project, we had the idea to make a naked superbike. We still think this idea is worth following and the project is not stopped, but it is a bit on hold. The clear priority for us at the moment and the clear idea from the Stefan Pierer was to say ‘guys, before we have a naked superbike, we must have a successful real superbike.”

You can’t argue with that logic, especially considering KTM already has a successful naked bike in the SuperDuke model line. It will be interesting to see how KTM differentiates the Venom from the SuperDuke, or if the SuperDuke will be discontinued in the future, which some dealers have reported to A&R as being a possibility.